I think I owe it t to you, too, because you all made a really big effort to try to get my design printed by rating it, but it didn’t really pay off in the end. It didn’t get printed, I didn’t get any money, but after all your hard work, you still had no opportunity to get my t-shirt. So, I’m changing that.

Behold, below, in a very crooked picture, the shirt you’ve all worked so hard for! (Also available for men, and on totebags!). Thank you guys again, for all you did in 2011. Click on the picture if you want to buy a shirt or a tote!

Click on the picture to buy a t-shirt or totebag!

I’ve gotten more and more requests for actual prints of my paintings, so I’ve set up shop! I really wanted to keep matters in my own hands, but I found that it’s really hard to manage production, distribution and shipping without the costs being really high. But fear not, the shop that I’ve opened is facilitated by Society6, who are well known among artist communities for having really high quality art prints!

You can visit my shop here! I would feel really happy if, if you really like one of the paintings, you would share the link to that print on Facebook or Twitter! Thanks!

Because, I wonder, mostly, if I could become good at it. I haven’t always been good at portraits. That took a lot of practice, too. The biggest difference, so far, or the biggest obstacle, for me, is the texture. My portraits usually don’t have a great amount of texture and that is fine because they work well without it. But a forest is the very definition of texture. Yet I don’t want to be drawing every single leaf. I don’t draw every single hair on a head of hair, either.

It’s so hard. But anyway, here are the paintings, both only took about 15 minutes.

Tell me what you think:

Even ‘successful’ art sites like DeviantArt, which, with over 19 million registered members and over 45 million unique visitors per month, lacks in one most important aspects of a community: conversation. People might disagree with me and say, but there’s tons of comments on there! But let’s face it, comments aren’t necessarily a conversation. Most of what happens on DeviantArt involves artists broadcasting their art, and spectators, singing praises or telling the artists that their art sucks. DeviantArt has forums, journals, polls and a message center, but I still find that the user interface design doesn’t invite to really participate in any discussion. Messages get lost along the way, it’s not attractive, the kind of responses are often not about the topic… and let’s say it, DeviantArt needs to unclutter if they want a chance to be succesful as a real community with engaged users who do not just come to look at the pretty pictures. It’s more of a broadcasting platform than a communication platform, even though it claims to be an art community.

I was (briefly) part a community called Artician, which has a very slick design and left me with a good first impression: it wanted to be seen as a more professional, no nonsense platform, but it never reached critical mass. Why? Uploading your art portfolio is a complete hassle, even though they let you import your galleries from DeviantArt. Categories that you can file your art into are confusing or don’t match my idea of what my art is. Here, too, there is a bit of a disconnect between the platform, the art and the conversation.

The one community that I can think of that succeeds in being a community is that of ConceptArt(.org). I once made a list of what, in my opinion, a succesful community has, and ConceptArt.org has most of them:

Art, in itself, is a way to profile. It’s part of your identity. If it’s something you’re good at, you’ll no doubt like to show it to people. Conceptart.org is a community for artists that lets them display their art with the intention of getting feedback so they can improve upon whatever they want to improve upon. Training and seminars are organised offline; artists often meet in real life at one of these events. The community is all about user generated content. It’s the core of it. I haven’t met any assholes, but have received my share of well written but sometimes harsh criticism. Basically, it has all the best keypoints. There are however, two reasons why I didn’t stay: 1. I felt intimidated by the amazing talent on there. 2. There was a huge disconnect with the rest of the internet. ConceptArt.org is a forum, but there’s no easy way to share things with people not on the forum. It felt a bit outdated in design and user interface. And it felt a little bit elite. Not always a bad thing, but I didn’t stay.

It seems all these community based art sites have part of what it takes, but I’ve yet to find one that suits my every need. One where conversation is made easy and accessible.  Right now, my hopes are on Facebook, but I’d much rather see a new kind of community succeed.

Hey guys,

My art is for sale! In book form! 24 pages full of full colour artprints! The book is 7”x7” and includes some of my most popular paintings from the last few years!!! You can buy it by adding it to your shopping basket via the preview widget up above, or you can go here and buy it. If you do not buy it I hope that you will spread the word on Facebook and Twitter!

(with portraits of Darren Criss, Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and many others!)

Yet the best (or at least most interesting) of my pieces are the ones that I’ve left unfinished or more stylistic. This is backed up by the fact that they almost always get more likes on  Facebook and more reblogs on Tumblr. Often to my own annoyance, because after all,  I’ve worked my butt off to bring more details into the finished piece.

Clearly, my life is insanely complicated. I’ve been looking for an article that a fabulous artist wrote about the art of omission. It’s not actually called that, but I would call it that. It looks into the illusion of something you have to create as an artist by leaving things up to the viewer’s imagination. I’ve not yet mastered the technique. I’ll post another entry when I do find the article.

My most recent frustration in the ‘done is better than perfect’ department was over this piece (it’s not perfect, so it’s not done):

On April Fool’s Day, I posted this status update on Facebook some time in the morning. I hadn’t planned on doing it, because I have never quite managed to pull off a joke without everyone instantly knowing it was made up. But I decided to do it on a whim. I tagged Warner Bros. in my post to make it extra convincing and without spending too much time on the wording, hit send.

Now, I’ve never gotten this many likes on anything I’ve ever posted on Facebook. 64 likes! I have 646 frirends on Facebook. That’s 10%! Even though the first comment was one that questioned the authenticity of the message, the rest were all basically encouragements and congrats.  It’s the most flattering response I’ve ever gotten. Even after I’d outed the joke, people were still falling for it.

You better not be kidding, because this should be true.

Those kind of messages just warmed my heart. So, does anyone know anyone at Warner Bros.?

Fayestardust's Art on Facebook

When Facebook introduced Timeline for Pages on the 29th of last month, I got all excited! I won’t lie, I’m a huge fan of social media in general, and I’m not likely to respond negatively to any one of them, but I’m a particularly big fan of Facebook. I loved Timeline when it came out for profiles – enough to sign up as a developer to get early access. Granted, I like puttering about with Facebook apps, so it wasn’t a complete scam.

Ever since, I’ve been hoping Timeline would be available for pages, because it opens the page up to a lot more visually attractive displays. Especially for artists, it’s a great asset. It also helps me to tell my artistic story and visualise my journey as an artist. I’ve been putting up older drawings, and by doing so, I surprised even myself with the progress I’ve made over time and it helped me appreciate the things that I’ve achieved. It’s a nice reminder of all that is good about my art.

Anyway, I’ve done up the page to the best of my abilities. It still needs some tweaking, but I think it’s a good start. Go like my page and tell me what you think!